SICU Nursing Perspective: Compartment Syndrome

Hi everyone-

I'm on the final stretch of my BSN and was interested in doing a project relevant to SICU/MICU Nursing. Up to this point I've only worked in a trauma ICU as a tech but from that experience I noticed on the few times it occured that compartment syndrome might be worth investigating. Thinking back I remember one case where it was a 35 y/o male with an occlusive abdominal dressing post MVA. He started simply with the p02 dropping, then HR went up, and pressure down. I remember an RN obtaining a bladder pressure but everyone still wasn't too sure what was going on (especially the resident) till we had some more senior RN's in the room.

I was thinking of investigating something allong the lines of "Compartment Syndrome: Early Recognition, Signs & Symptoms for the SICU Nurse" Maybe talk abotu the pathophysiology of whats happening and dedicate it to early signs & symptoms from the SICU nursing prospective. Let me know if that sounds like something you'd be interested in or maybe its a topic you've heard a lot about already. Not many of my faculty have SICU experience so I know this forum would be the best place to sound off about it. Thanks ahead of time for reading, any thoughts, or observations you might have.

catamounts